I do think it’s a shame the well meaning left wingers in this thread are feeling disenfranchised... but with the most right wing government we have had in 30 years, surely there has to be an element of tolerate the change for the good of the country? Get a centre left in at least...
Well, yes. I agree to an extent and politics must, by definition, contain compromise but the last time that happened they introduced all sorts of policies (especially around education but Ed Balls appalling damage to the Social Workers in Britain is never forgotten) that I just couldn't stomach, and I wasn't alone. It is Labour's shift to the right (and it was a much more significant shift to the right than many seem to recall) that is the primary driver of the utter collapse of the party in my country.
Left wingers feeling disenfranchised from the Labour party, a party of the left, isn't a great thing.
Now I'm not being naive. A truly left wing party will not be elected in Britain in my lifetime. Starmer's mission is to achieve power and I think he'll have a good shot at it. Publically taking out RLB will doubtless have helped him in polling and the people who can alternate their votes between Tory and Labour may come back. To appeal to those people though, any hope I and the millions who have (what now appear to considered "hard left" and extreme) left wing views regarding social care, benefits, education and healthcare and also share liberal social opinions (not, contrary to popular belief, something omnipresent in traditional Labour circles) are repelled by the changes that win such floating voters to Labour.
The argument that it's better to have centrist Labour party than these reprehensible feudal Lords in power (and this lot are not more to the right than Thatcher was although they are in some ways worse) is valid...but it is yet another nail in the coffin of the Labour movement and the progressive left of this country. I don't consider myself to be particularly left wing: on this site I clearly am. In this country as a whole I clearly am. I don't think I've drifted left. I am disenfranchised by a desire to appeal to a centre (which many consider an aspirational place to be) which to me is someway to the right. I don't want a replication in Britain of the US scenario where a party as patently right wing as the Democrats are your left option. The centre is achieved through balance between differing opinions not through hitting the median and kowtowing to this country's Tory controlled media and establishment...but the fight was long ago lost.